Elephant Conservation In Zambia

Background

• The African elephant is known as the largest terrestrial mammal. They are extremely intelligent, emotional and social animals. Elephants have exhibited complex social systems and family bonds.

• African elephants were once found nearly all over the continent. Poaching, habitat loss, and the human-elephant conflict have caused their population number to decline dramatically.

• The presence of these elephants helps to maintain suitable habitats for many other species. In central African forests, up to 30 percent of tree species may require elephants to help with dispersal and germination.

• The numbers of elephants remaining in Africa today is uncertain, but are likely to be about 500,000.

• Taking into account births, these

• They began to hunt and kill rhinos and elephants for their ivory horns and tusks. These were sold on domestic and international markets.

• In the early 1970s, Zambia’s elephant population was about 35,000. By the 1990s only about 6,000 elephants remained.

• Due to the extinction of the black rhino and the devastation of the elephant population, the Zambian government initiated several wildlife conservation policies. These include agreements with Zimbabwe and other countries where rhino and elephant poaching were common.

• However, these conservation efforts have had little long-term impacts as many Zambian poachers have crossed the border to neighboring countries to continue poaching.

• Many poachers are now concentrating on the elephant as the few rhinos that remain are under increasing protection.

• Other problems - such as a continued weak economy, limited resources for wildlife preservation, competition with local farmers for land, the politics of wildlife legislation, and a still very lucrative global market in ivory - have made it very difficult for the Zambian government to protect its rhino and elephant populations. The end result is that, today, "rhinos [and elephants] are still being killed faster than they can

• Ecosystems can change drastically from human activities like natural resource exploration, agriculture, and industrial developments such as pipelines, housing, and roads.

• When the land can no longer support wildlife, it leads to the displacement of wildlife or worse: extinction

• They may also be separated from other elephant groups, decreasing their breeding opportunities. This is not healthy for the genetic diversity of the population

• When grazing goes unchecked, it can quickly eliminate grass in an area. This means less food for both livestock and wildlife, including elephants, and leads to soil erosion that impacts the growth of grass in the future.

Conflict with humans

• People in villages see elephants as their enemy since people have been killed protecting their crops

• Because of a decline in food security, snares have been set